Weird beaming

• Apr 26, 2015 - 15:14

I have a song (attached: Marching Through Georgia) where each note just has its own stem, no beams.
Our conductor decided the song ought to have beams for each beat.
So, I thought I would select everything, beam everything using the second box in "Beam Properties" and then use the first box in "Beam Properties" to split the beam on each beat.

I did the first part, selected everything and clicked on the second box in "beam properties". The result is attached as "Marching Through Georgia wrong beams"

I don't understand what has happened.
1. Where have the beams come from in bar 11 (though it looks like the beam starts in bar 10 and finishes part way through bar 12-- does that beam actually belong to the treble stave for bars 13 & 14?)
2. What's happened to the beams in bars 13 & 14, they've disappeared in the treble stave
3. And in the bass stave in bars 15 & 16
4. It looks as though the beams in bars13 & 14 bass stave should actually belong to the treble stave.

I'm really puzzled any suggestions?


Comments

In reply to by Shoichi

It looks like there is a bug, though, in the drawing of the beams after "beam middle" is applied to all notes. Specifically, the beams for mm. 13-16 are drawn one system too high: the beams for the top staff of mm. 13-14 are appearing in mm. 11-12, and the beams for the bottom staff of mm. 15-16 are appearing in mm. 13-14. The problem disappears when you go into 'Continuous View' (as it would almost have to), and reappears when you return to 'Page View'.

In reply to by ghicks

Applying Beam Middle to every note is wrong since you don't want the first notes in each measure to be Beam Middle. There is, however, a bug that affects beaming across the end of one system to the next whereby it loops back to the beginning of the same line. I think when you combine the two you get a real mess.

BTW, there is a possibly better way to get the effect I think you want. MuseScore allows you to set the default beam according to time signature by right clicking the time signature, selecting Time Signature Properties, and using the controls in that dialog. So:

1) select all, double click Beam Properties / Auto to reset beams to default (every two beats)
2) right click time signature, Time SIgnature Properties
3) click the eighth notes on beats 2 & 4 to break those beams
4) OK

This *would* result in all your beams automatically updating to break every beat instead of the default every two beats. *Except* there appears to be a bug where doing this to a time signature in a multimeasure rest won't take effect - it's actually internally a different time signature than the one that would display if multimeasure rests were turned off. So you'll just need to turn multimeasure rests off first (press "M") then on again when done. There is a related bug report I will update: #52391: Key / Time Signature Courtesy option (and delete) ineffective with Multimeasure Rests

Also, you need to do this separately for the two staves. But if this is something you intedn to use a lot, you can create a custom version of 4/4 using the master time signatures palette (Shift+T) and add that to your palette and use that in place of the original palette 4/4 in the future.

Thanks to everyone who gave input.
Glad it wasn't something I had done.

The "Auto" option plus a few manual adjustments worked fine, thanks for the suggestion.

I also like Marc's option for time signatures. Didn't realise such an option existed and will try that at some point.

I don't exactly what our Musical Director wants in terms of beaming, I need to check more clearly, but I think it's beams for every beat and now I know the various options available.

I love this software, not just for the functionality (which is magnificent) but also for the forums where most people seem more than happy to help those with less experience, it's great. Thank you everybody.

My only grumble is that I find a method which works for the task I have and then don't try anything else so I don't learn anything more about the software. That's a grumble about me, NOT MuseScore.

I shall have to down-load the manual and read it thoroughly.

Many thanks for all your help and for such brilliant software.

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